Podcast

On the show today, Bryant and Jay talk with the man, myth, and legend John Belcher. We recently got to know John over at his Adskills.com platform where he talks about YouTube scaling, Facebook scaling and other just good stuff.

John Belcher:

John Belcher is the teacher and one of the partners at AdSkills.com. John utilizes his background in sales and marketing, experience at Google, and ongoing experimentation with ads and analytics to create courses that help you create YOUR OWN results with paid traffic…because if you can’t replicate the results yourself, how good can the info really be?

Links & Resources Mentioned in Episode:

Transcription:

Jay L: Welcome everybody to the Stack the Odds show, I’m Jay Leishman and he’s Bryant Garvin. Today we’ve got a super, super awesome show. In fac,t this is the first time that we’ve had a guest on the show. So John Belcher joins us from adskills.com and we’re gonna have, what I think we’ll call between two ad guys. Do we know what that it is? You know the between two ferns? Zach Galifianakis?

Bryant G: Oh!

Jay L: Come on guys!

Bryant G: Oh, sorry. We totally just ruined that joke, dude.

Jay L: You totally ruined it. Bryant and John, how you doing guys?

Bryant G: Doing great, man.

John Belcher: Great, thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jay L: Okay guys-

Bryant G: Hey, real quick Jay, before we start, like I think we should tell people who John is, right? Why we have him on here, because he’s been doing this a while. He actually started at Google in advertising, right? That’s one of the things that makes John unique is he comes from that insider Google perspective and realized that he could just dramatically help businesses grow by leveraging, and tweaking, and using all the knowledge that he had of the insider system there, right?

Bryant G: And it’s totally expanded beyond that and I just love his focus on YouTube. Anybody that listens knows that I’m super-fanboy about YouTube, so that’s it.

Jay L: Yeah, so that’s good stuff. So we brought you a former Google employee with his perspectives and he actually left Google and moved on to bigger and better, so he could actually help businesses which is the end goal. And so you’ll learn why John does that. But today’s topic, guys, we’re gonna talk about why we look at other platforms besides Facebook. So this is really gonna be just a round table, probably shoot some arrows in each others quivers and really talk about our philosophies around that, and for those who have been listening to our podcast know that Bryant and I come from the background of the omni-present platform strategy, or the multi-platform strategy and why you need to be on that.

Jay L: And we don’t want people to be what we call a one-trick ad pony, where you’re just running ads on one platform. So let’s talk about why we look at other ad platforms besides Facebook, John. So-

Bryant G: Well I’m gonna start this off, because I think a lot of it … if you just look at the freaking news over the last three weeks, a month, that alone is a good enough reason to look at something besides just Facebook, right? And before I … and people always, “Why are you hating on Facebook?” We don’t hate on Facebook! we love Facebook! We spend millions of dollars on Facebook, right? Our clients spend millions of dollars. The thing is though is they don’t just spend millions of dollars on Facebook, and that’s the difference, right?

Jay L: Yeah, so as of recording just Zuckerberg in front of the senator yesterday, or today?

Bryant G: Yesterday.

Jay L: Yesterday. And I think we can probably safely say it’s probably a good thing that the senators maybe don’t have a Facebook account, or maybe they should so they can actually understand how the thing works, and maybe they should have an ad account and that should be a pre-req before they actually do this [crosstalk 00:03:36]-

Bryant G: Try and regulate it.

Jay L: Yeah. But John, I know you’re shaking your head over there. Let’s talk about this, man. So what other platforms do you look at besides Facebook? And why? What is the grand scheme in your mind?

John Belcher: Absolutely. So I think the big thing to echo what you talk about with the omni-channel, the omni-present strategy, kind of a motto we have over at AdSkills is build a stool that you’d want to sit on if it was upside down. And when you’ve got a one-legged stool it’s not very comfortable to perch up on. Like, that’s the big thing for us is figuring out how you can build in different layers to support your business. And I think it’s one of those things … what I’m always amazed at when I go work with clients is I come into that business and they’re always one-leg heavy.

John Belcher: It’s a huge search … you know, they do a ton of Google AdWords or they do a ton of Facebook. It’s really difficult for them to figure out how to leverage different types of platforms, and I’m gonna go back, back in the day here to a Eugene Schwartz book called Breakthrough Advertising. What’s really important to understand here is there’s what’s called the five stages of awareness. Everything from I don’t know anything about this business, to I just need an offer to take action. There’s five separate layers in there, and what’s really important to think about … we actually have a diagram at AdSkills. We call it the network funnel, is looking which networks line up with stage of awareness.

John Belcher: Like it’s really important, if someone’s never heard of you an AdWords campaign is a terrible idea. But if someone is searching for, at the bottom of the funnel, they’re looking for a provider of mattresses. Bryant knows that world well. Facebook, that’s not the right place to advertise, and so a big part of this is figuring out which of your ad networks, and which of the different objectives within them can help you achieve your goals?

John Belcher: So are you trying to spread awareness to the very top of what it is that you do, the problem that people have? Are you trying to make them solution aware? Are you trying to make them problem aware? All those different stages, that’s kind of how the different ad networks blend in. And if you’ve got an offer, a message, and a channel for all three of those that’s how you create a truly scalable business is by operating in each one of those stages of awareness.

John Belcher: So I don’t know if that answered your question, but that’s always how I start is by talking about those five stages.

Bryant G: Dude, I love that! That’s freaking awesome. And I’m gonna throw John under the bus here, so I hope you have a link to that chart because I’d love to throw it into the show notes for these guys.

John Belcher: Absolutely.

Bryant G: We didn’t talk about that ahead of time, but I think that would be awesome for them to be able to get that resource, because it’s true, each platform has a purpose. And not all of them are the same, right? Like I won’t do things on Facebook that I will do on Google. I won’t do things on Google search that I do on YouTube, or to the display network. Everything has a place depending on where they’re at in that consideration process, right?

Bryant G: If they’ve never heard of you, don’t even realize they have a problem or that there’s a solution to it, versus those guys that are like, “I need something today. Where can I buy X, Y, Z?” Right? So I love the way you explained that, man.

John Belcher: Thanks.

Jay L: So John, how do you look at that when you’re looking at user intent? And that’s a big thing that Bryant and I always talk about, is you need to use the platform for what it’s designed for, right? So we get people to come to us and they’ll go, “Hey man, like I can’t figure YouTube out.” We sat down with a guy, and he runs a really high profile business, $25 million plus company, and he’s like, “Dude, we can’t figure out YouTube! We’ve been trying to do this for the last two years, we can’t get people to buy right away on YouTube. And it’s the craziest thing!”

Jay L: So we dive in, we take a look, and we’re looking at it and we’re going, “Well, have you ever considered that you’re actually running ads, with the wrong intent, on YouTube? You’re trying to get the sale, get it in bed right away when in fact people are coming to YouTube for the intent to research, to learn about your brand, to get entertained about your brand.” So talk about that a bit.

John Belcher: Yeah, so there’s a couple things and I’m gonna break it down. First I want to talk about how you think about the stages of awareness of the networks you might use, and then we’ll talk about YouTube specifically because that’s where I geek out. So when we talk about the stages of awareness, you know at the very top is people have no idea of the problem that they actually have. So that’s when you look at huge mass volume, we call it mass market networks. So you’ve got native ads or Google display, or super high-level YouTube ads when we’re talking about trying to do a run-up network campaign to as many people as possible.

John Belcher: And that’s when you’ve got a great solution for a problem people don’t know they have. So Dollar Shave Club is an awesome example. They ran a YouTube ad on a super-high scale and they said, “You can get razors shipped to your door for a dollar, and $19 of the Gillette razor is going to Roger Federer.” So that super high-level of awareness that there’s a solution that exists you didn’t even know about. You can ask, when you’re operating at that level that’s where you look at the Agora Financials that are using GDN, or people using native advertising, that’s like, “Hey, you have no idea what this is about, we’re gonna sell you really hard. And if you buy right here then you’re worth a lot as you continue to move through our back end.”

John Belcher: So that’s kind of that super high-level, you’re looking truly mass market. GDN, native, high level YouTube ads on a massive scale? That’s what those are amazing for. Then you kind of move into the problem aware, so people who are actively talking about things. That’s when you’ve got interest targeting, that’s where Facebook is incredible. It’s got this huge data realm of interest targeting, so that’s where you really start to move into, “Well, Facebook has heard me talking on my phone about whatever problem that I’ve got going on.” And they buy that third-party data from the phone side, from the audio, and they’re able to utilize that. And you’ve got interest targeting, right? Where you’ve liked these pages, or you did this, or you did that.

John Belcher: Now some of that may be changing with the recent regulations, but there’s a lot of things on Facebook from the interest targeting side that they know you have been … something about this that you have been interacting, or engaging, your friends have been engaging with, that you’re a likely target? That’s kind of that next step of opportunity where you can really go through and say, someone has exhibited some type of interest in this, they’re not actively researching it Jay, like you talked about that’s what’s so important, and that’s where Google comes in, but at that high level interest targeting that’s where you can really leverage Facebook.

John Belcher: And then you start moving into the stages of research and actively seeking a solution, and that’s where I love the Google platforms because you’ve got in-market audiences, and now what are called custom intents. So you can use keywords and URL’s that are saying people are active researching these blogs, these things. So you’re covering when people are actively going through that research phase, and that’s where I love YouTube from the opportunity to use in-market and custom intent audiences to really hammer people who are actively looking for a solution? Those are great call to actions, whether it may be getting more information. It may be the time for sale, it’s really kind of going through there.

John Belcher: And then bottom of the funnel when they’re actively looking for something is AdWords. So that’s kind of how I look at that whole funnel, so I don’t know if that was too much of a deep dive, but that’s stuff that I love.

Bryant G: I love it.

Jay L: Dude, we could go on forever. Now, hold on Bryant, did he say that Google was listening? Come on guys, nobody-

Bryant G: Facebook was listening, Facebook.

Jay L: No, no they don’t listen-

Bryant G: Not Google, nobody listens. And they don’t read you’re messages in Gmail or Facebook messenger. They don’t scan them at all.

Jay L: Yeah, and when you’re talking about traveling to Croatia on the phone, and then you see a Croatia ad three hours later [crosstalk 00:11:04]-

Bryant G: That’s just coincidence. It’s coincidence because it’s top of mind for you, so you recognize it. That ad was there the whole time you just never recognized it before then.

Jay L: Yeah, yeah.

Bryant G: Yeah absolutely.

Jay L: We’ve got to clarify, because John might be, you know, he might be not saying … No I’m just kidding.

Bryant G: No, absolutely. But MJ and I like to joke a lot, as you guys know, but one of the things that I wanted to ask you there, you talk about Google at the bottom of the funnel and it’s kind of a controversial thing. Some people are like, “I will never bid on my brand’s terms.” And other people are like, “If you don’t bid on your brand terms, you’re a freaking fool and you just wasted all of that money you spent somewhere else.” And for those that don’t know, again, brand search, or brand terms, are a specific brand, right?

Bryant G: So like Purple Mattress versus Memory Foam Mattress. That’s the difference between brand and non-brand. So I would love for you to talk about that a little bit, dude.

John Belcher: Yeah, so this is one of those things I always laugh. Having been a Google rep is kind of one of those things when people are like, “Hey, Google rep suggested I do this.” Nine times out of ten I’m like, “I don’t know if I would take that advice.” When it comes to brand search, it’s definitely something … it’s kind of like you basically have parking spots right in front of your house, and if you don’t park there someone else is going to, especially if you’ve got a business that’s making any kind of money. There’s gonna be other people that are parking on your lot. So, because you are the brand yourself you get first dibs on your parking spot.

John Belcher: If you’re not taking the first parking spot, frankly I understand you don’t want to pay for your own clicks with someone searching for your name. If you’re not willing to pay a dollar or two to get someone to come convert on your site, and you’re willing to lose it to your competitor, like I just … it’s stepping over dollars to pick up pennies and I think it’s just something, it’s kind of a best practice that absolutely needs to be done. I’ve seen people build million dollar businesses doing strictly brand search for clients that they just pick up conversions at the end of the funnel and get credit for it.

John Belcher: So I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s kind of how I’ve always tackled that one.

Bryant G: Yeah.

Jay L: That’s a really, really good analogy. I’m totally jumping in Bryant because I have another point here on this. That the parking lot thing, I’m gonna start stealing that, man. That’s a wicked idea. I had a client that I was talking to and they’re like, “Well, I don’t want to bid on my own brand phrases.” And you know what I said to him? I go, “But other people are going to take it.” But here’s another aspect that you’re not looking at. You are depending on SEO traffic, okay? And so if you’re depending on SEO traffic and people are coming in, is there converting ad copy that is actually pulling in the sale?

Jay L: You don’t get control on the SEO side, you don’t control that as much. Why not put that in front of you and actually 100% control the experience, get multiple link opportunities, specific link opportunities if someone’s asking certain FAQ questions? Hey, man, you’ve got an extension link there, right? Talk about that.

John Belcher: Absolutely. It’s one of those pieces of when … especially if you’re running something, we’ll talk about this here in a second with YouTube, but often what we’ve done within the brand term side is, you know, if it was Purple Mattress who say, “Purple Mattress. Did you see our YouTube ad? Click here!” And being able to go through and direct people that are looking from an off … whether it be an online, or offline, but a what I call a three card monte traffic source. Where it’s like, “Hey, we know that we’re generating traffic but it’s not coming from a click the way that you’d see from a Facebook, or a GDN, or native ads.” When you’ve got something like that you have a huge opportunity to use your ad copy to not say, “This is the brand website, but this is specifically for people who saw this, come click here.”

John Belcher: And then absolutely from the site links, if you’ve got deals running you can go through and use your little offer extensions. There’s a million different ways you can go through and utilize AdWords ads, but really from that state it’s basically just claiming your real estate. I think someone, I can’t remember I was talking to somebody about Monopoly and they’re like, “If you had one square with all of your houses on it you will make more money off that property than you would having ten different squares with no houses on it.”

John Belcher: [crosstalk 00:15:08] and so it’s really doubling down on, it’s your business. It’s your brand. Why would you not try and own your own real estate?

Bryant G: Exactly. Because you’ve already spent money, or done something, to actually get them to search for that brand because that’s the big thing with Google, right? With Google search, with search, they are only searching for something that they already know about. If it’s a problem they’re searching for a solution. If it’s a product they’re searching for that product. But nobody goes to Google and is like, “Randomly give me something.” Right? The whole purpose for going there is to find something that they were looking for.

John Belcher: Yup, and when they’ve got that level of intent it’s super important that you capitalize on it. So if it costs you an extra $1.50, if you can’t afford $1.50 your business needs a bigger back end.

Bryant G: So we were talking a little bit earlier, and everybody that’s listened, everybody that knows me, I’m like, “You can’t use YouTube the way you use anything else. Nobody goes to YouTube to click on your freaking ad. They go to YouTube to do one thing, to watch the video that your ad showed up in front of. That’s it! That’s all they are there to do.” So YouTube performs much differently than the slot machine of Facebook or Google search, or even the display network, right? And so I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how you view YouTube and what are the things that they really need to be looking at to determine if they’re being successful on YouTube?

Bryant G: Because I know you’ve heard it as much as I have, at least the, “Oh, YouTube doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.”

John Belcher: Absolutely, and it’s knowing where to look. And this is kind of this piece at the end of the day, Bryant as you talked about, people come to YouTube with a purpose. So just look, if you look at the consumption numbers the average mobile session on YouTube is over 40 minutes long. So when people are there they’re going down the rabbit hole, but it’s different than Facebook because with Facebook, or Twitter, or any of the feed based platforms you’re scrolling through, you’re looking for a distraction. You’re looking for something that’s gonna catch your attention, right?

John Belcher: And so if something does catch your attention you click on it, you go check it out, you may opt in. But when we look at YouTube, the people who are there, I say they’re there for one of two reasons. To be educated, or to be entertained. Those are the only two reasons that people are there. How to do something, or I want to listen to music or watch a show, or I want to watch the highlights from an old football game, whatever those things are.

John Belcher: There’s 300 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every single minute, so the inventory available on the network is ginormous. But, like you said, the one thing you have to understand when it comes to YouTube, people did not come there to watch your ad. So the first thing you have to understand is if you’re gonna do great advertising on YouTube, you have to give them a reason to not click the skip button. If you’re good at it you might get three out of ten people to say, “I’m not gonna click the skip button.” And that’s, maybe you could get a 40% view rate like if you’re absolutely crushing it.

John Belcher: But you’ve got to understand that people have intent, they want to watch the video that you’re standing in front of them. So, that being said, what’s so amazing about YouTube is if someone decides to pay attention to your ad the quality of traffic that we see from YouTube is so much higher than Facebook, or other platforms, because someone said, “I liked your ad enough that I’m actually gonna go … ” and this is where we talk about three card monte. Everyone wants to see the clicks, right? They want to see a click from YouTube. What’s my cost per view and my cost per click?

John Belcher: It’s 10 times higher than Facebook, it’s not working. Well, what you don’t realize is they’re still there to watch that video. What they probably did was open a new tab and organically search for your business, or they typed in your URL directly. And so that’s where we talk about three card monte. If people try and compare a Facebook metric to a YouTube metric, you’re not comparing apples to oranges. You’re comparing Apples to Japanese. Like it’s so different. You need to be looking in those other areas, you need to be looking behind door number two and door number three to say, “Wow, we didn’t get a bunch of clicks from YouTube, but we just saw our organic traffic … ”

John Belcher: I love, what I do every single time I start with a new client, whenever we’re starting with YouTube ads if they’re site does not have 10 thousand visitors a day I’ll go do a live video capture when we’re watching the site, I’ll turn on a YouTube campaign and I’ll watch the realtime stats. And what you will see is the second I start you will see this organic traffic just shoot up, because people saw your ad and they’re coming to your site. If they didn’t do that your ad sucks. You are not capturing peoples attention. But when you do YouTube advertising correctly your organic and direct traffic will go through the roof, and so that’s that piece of whenever I’ve worked with someone who did YouTube advertising and said it didn’t work we went and dug back into Google Analytics, looked at the timeframe they ran their YouTube ads, and all of a sudden they’re like, “Wow! There was this huge jump in organic traffic, why was that? We don’t know.”

John Belcher: Well I do, and I’ll show you I can do it again. And that’s that piece of getting that into peoples heads, that mindset of this is a totally different place that you need to look for your results. Now I do have to mention YouTube just came out with this product called TrueView for Action which has actually really improved the click-through rates that you’re seeing for YouTube. It used to be maybe 20% clicks, 80% search. It may be more around the 50, 50. You’re still gonna get a lot of view-through conversions which is like a four letter word for internet marketers, they don’t think view-throughs are real. If you’re using YouTube and you don’t believe in view-through conversions you’re gonna do horribly with that platform.

John Belcher: You have to understand that people are not clicking on the ad, they are coming through to your site from search and direct traffic. So I’ll get off my soap box, but that’s really [crosstalk 00:20:58]

Bryant G: No-

John Belcher: … thing to understand.

Jay L: Hey, when [crosstalk 00:20:59]-

Bryant G: No, I wanted you to get on the soapbox!

Jay L: Yeah, that was good, man. So when you get those organic peaks, and I think this is a good note thing for everyone else is that, make sure you’re adding notes inside of Google Analytics. You date it-

John Belcher: Absolutely.

Jay L: Right?

John Belcher: Yes.

Jay L: So then you can go back and look, because what will happen is in a year, or two years, someone’s gonna go, “What the heck happened there?” Right?

John Belcher: Right.

Jay L: And so in Google Analytics you’ve got to make sure you put those notes in there, so that it’s just so much easier to document.

Bryant G: Yeah [crosstalk 00:21:30]

John Belcher: Absolutely.

Bryant G: And you’ve got to have it set up, right?

John Belcher: Yep.

Bryant G: That’s one of the first things we teach, right Jay? Is actually even freaking set up your dang tracking, otherwise you’re not gonna know what’s going on.

Jay L: Yep, yep.

John Belcher: And what I do with clients, I’ll set up a dashboard in Data Studio, you can do this for free now. You’ve got the opportunity to pull in your Google Analytics data. Separate out just your organic traffic and bring in your AdWords spent, and you want to line them up right over each other so it’s a very simple dashboard. Organic traffic, YouTube spent. And you want to see here’s what it’s been, you kind of look at a window for the last 30 days and you say, okay day zero is here. This is when our ad spend started. What happened?

John Belcher: And you can do organic and direct traffic if you’re gonna include your URL inside your video, make sure that you include both of them. But you’re gonna see both of them take this huge spike. The other thing though that I really want to make sure people understand with YouTube is you may get cheaper cost per lead for whatever it is that you’re doing from Facebook, it will 100% of the time be more expensive to get leads or sales from YouTube. That’s always been my experience. But I’ve always found that the average cart value, or the lifetime value of a YouTube customer is equally, or even more higher, than this disparity between the cost per lead or the cost per sale.

John Belcher: It’s just a higher quality prospect, and Bryant you may have had a different experience, Jay you might have a different experience, but that’s always been my experience.

Bryant G: No, when we say cost … so one of the things that Jay and i talk a lot is macro versus micro tracking, right? And so when you’re talking cost of a lead from Facebook, cost of a lead from YouTube, you’re really talking about the micro level stuff, where, “Oh, I tracked this conversion in YouTube and this was the cost. I tracked this conversion in Facebook and this was the cost.” And that totally ignores that halo effect, or that direct traffic, or that organic traffic, right?

Bryant G: And so when you start looking and doing much more of that mid to top of the funnel stuff, especially with YouTube and video, you’ve got to expand your horizons a little bit and even start looking at, “I put out this much dollars today, I got this many dollars back in. I put out this many dollars this month, this is how much I got back in.” Start looking at things on a macro level, not just at that micro level. And Justin, your business partner, had a post this week and something I said on there is, “Anybody that believes that the data is 100% accurate is already behind in the game.” Right?

Bryant G: If you are trusting the data 100%, you are already behind in the game and you are never going to be able to grow to the level that you want to.

John Belcher: Absolutely.

Jay L: I have a really good example about that. One of the guys that I’m consulting with on just some of their ads, they were running a product that’s using one of Facebook’s tools in the Messenger, okay? And so we did a lot of traffic, and what they’re finding is that they really didn’t understand their lifecycle of their customer, how long it takes for someone to actually purchase and so they assumed that it’s like a seven day or a three day.

Jay L: When actually in fact it turns out that it’s like 20 plus day. Well, when Facebook says you can’t add any more people to this bot service and you’ve got to cut it off, no new customers, well then how do they … when your ads are turned off, because you can’t bring in new people, how is it that you’re still getting quite a few sales trickle through? It’s because you built up a lot of this social equity, but you’ve also built up a lot of the direct traffic, too, as well.

Jay L: And there’s other kinds of traffic that’s happening, so when you start to look at it from a micro to a macro, this is another small example of what a macro looks like because there’s still a lot of people that know about the brand and want to know about it, they just took a little longer to purchase and buy, right? And so that’s a huge, huge way to look at it. We’re big on the macro versus macro, micro is super important.

John Belcher: Absolutely.

Jay L: And you’ve go to know what that is, and you’ve got to know what those little levers are that you can pull so that the actual ship pulls out of the yard.

John Belcher: Yep.

Jay L: And then when the ship pulls out of the yard, then you measure how big and how fast a ship’s going, so that you can actually go, “Alright guys, let’s put some more coal underneath and let’s get this thing humming more.” Right?

John Belcher: Absolutely. But the only thing that I’m going to say to counter the point that you guys just made is, in my experience, so if you’ve got someone who’s been successful on Facebook and they’re driving direct traffic and they’re getting a ton of organic and direct traffic themselves from Facebook, they’re gonna say, “Well, how much money do I have to spend on YouTube to see this halo effect work?” Right? “Because I’ve already got a thousand organic sessions a day, or 5 thousand, or 10 thousand, or whatever.” You don’t have to spend a ton of money to see a statistically significant spike from YouTube, so it’s really hard to see that.

John Belcher: So what I’ve done with people is go through and create what we call isolation experiments. Where you’re gonna create either a splintered off portion of your offer on a different URL, or you can do what SodaStream did. When SodaStream wanted to figure out how they could utilize YouTube advertising, and the costs for those micro conversions, they built a fake brand called Heavy Bubbles. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen the Mountain from Game of Thrones, he’s the worlds strongest man, they created its own brand to go through and understand the metrics.

John Belcher: And what they saw is the cost to get someone to that website was higher than other traffic sources, so that’s when I say the cost for a micro conversion from YouTube because if someone’s gonna qualify themselves by opening a new tab and going to that site, it’s gonna be more expensive than just an easy click of the button, right? It’s one click versus new tab, type everything in. It’s gonna be a higher cost per whatever if you compare them apples to apples. But the value of that customer at the bottom of the funnel, in my experience, has always been a lot higher and that’s that piece of if your cost per first step in the funnel is 50% more expensive on YouTube, you are gonna see a lifetime value that echos that on the backend.

John Belcher: So that’s the biggest thing I want to make sure people have seen from my experience, I don’t know if that’s the same from your side but-

Jay L: No.

John Belcher: … YouTube getting super-quality traffic.

Bryant G: I completely agree with you, John, and one of the biggest reasons why is I’ve never seen a search ad and been like, “Oh my gosh! That just emotionally touched me right here!” Right? I just had to go to that site and do whatever, right? But you can layer on custom intent, basically things that people have searched for, websites that they’ve visited, and then show them an ad that is talking about that thing and you just attached to them emotionally.

Bryant G: If you get them to watch that ad there is an emotional connection there. They watched it with sound on, that’s another big thing about YouTube, right? Like 95% is sound on, it’s the full experience. So you are creating more of an emotional attachment and everybody that’s anybody that’s done marketing for a while understands that emotion is the first trigger to a purchase decision, and then they back it up with the facts, or the data, or the logic. But it’s always emotion that drives that decision.

John Belcher: Absolutely. And it’s truly echoed in the cart value, the lifetime value, the number of purchases if someone comes from YouTube. They’re a loyal customer because they’ve got the emotional connection.

Bryant G: And they’re hyper fans, dude. People that are on YouTube all the time, they are crazy! Like there’s this whole little community like, that any time a new video comes up, “First!” “Second!” “Third!” Like trying to comment on the videos as quick as they can, it reminds me a little bit of Reddit, how it’s like there’s this subculture that goes on over on YouTube that a lot of people just ignore, that they don’t [crosstalk 00:29:17] realize is there. And I mean, a billion freaking hours a day is watched on YouTube. A billion and a half users on YouTube worldwide. Why would you ignore a platform with that kind of volume?

John Belcher: But also, at the same time, the power of that on the other side of all the scale is how intimate you can make it. That’s what we really got to the point of with our business. I actually have a YouTube ad, I think we spend about 37 cents a day, that just re-targets people who have watched one of our videos but not subscribed to our YouTube channel. And I’m just saying, “Hey, we’ve got all this great content that’s coming out this quarter, make sure you subscribe today.”

John Belcher: And it’s just very simple, and if you can go through, when you talk about emotion and loyalty, if you’ve got a business with a face associated to it? If all you did was upload your customer lists and send a message to them that just says, “Hey, we here at Purple Mattresses hope you have a great Mother’s day!” Like the opportunity, the amount of referral, and the lifetime value, the extra revenue you can get. Yes that massive scale exists there, but when you’ve got a video ad that you can just say, “We just wanted to stop and take a second and say thank you for being one of our customers.”

John Belcher: Just something that simple, that micro level, you keep … I mean, to me the world now is about loyalty, right? That’s where people spend dollars with the people they’re loyal to. Just doing something that’s super simple like, “Hey, what’s up? I know it’s hump day, just wanted to say I hope you’re having a great one.” When you have people that are building these super simple, from their iPhone shoot a quick video, and just to say, “Hey, we appreciate you being a part of our community, or buying, or being a fan of ours.” Those types of things are incredible, and you can spend a penny to get that ad in front of somebody that’s gonna result in a $5 thousand sale?

John Belcher: We can do that all day, and I just think that’s what’s awesome is the yin and the yang of massive scale, but also super intimate.

Bryant G: Dude, I love that you brought that up because yes it is massive scale and I talk about that because your customers are there, and I think that’s one of the reasons people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to do YouTube.” Aside from the fact that they don’t understand it, but it can be very intimate. Even to the point where somebody just went and searched on a specific product, and you have an ad then that shows up before that cat video they were gonna watch, that talks about a product that helps them with that problem that they had. And they’re like, “Holy crap!” Right?

Bryant G: It’s that Facebook thing that we talked about, right? “Oh, they were listening to my conversation and then I saw an ad.” You can do that there, but I love the intimate thing, right? Because that’s … we talk a lot about building brands a lot, Jay and I do, and the difference between a long-term business and a short-term money mill is building a brand. And building a brand is like building a house, building a town, building a community where there’s a personality to that brand even if it’s not one person. They feel almost like that brand is their friend, and doing those little micro things I love it, dude!

John Belcher: I mean, if Steve Jobs was still here I guarantee you one of the first things that he would do, is he would go create a YouTube ad campaign for everyone that owned a Mac, any Apple device, and just have a standard retargeting campaign going that continues to polarize them. And, you know, it’s like the think different campaign way back-

Bryant G: Yup.

John Belcher: … in the day. He would create something that was super simple that targeted Apple users all day, every day. And then mix it up once a month just to be like, “We appreciate that you’re a part of our community.” That stickiness, like that one ad that cost you three cents, two cents, one cent to show is gonna result in Mac sales for the rest of your life. They’re gonna keep buying your iPhones, and your MacBook Pro’s, your MacBook Air’s. All of those things. That’s such amount of stickiness for such a small investment? That’s why I love YouTube.

Bryant G: So Apple, if you’re listening we can help you. [crosstalk 00:33:14]

Jay L: We can’t help you bring Steve back, but-

Bryant G: But we can help you do the same thing in another way. So I love that you, dude, I love the way you think John. I think we’re brothers from another mother or something, I don’t know.

John Belcher: I love it! We’re both boys from the mountains, I love it!

Bryant G: Heck yeah! Absolutely.

Jay L: Yeah. So-

Bryant G: So I don’t have anything else, do you Jay?

Jay L: No, I think we’ve tapped out and hopefully we haven’t put too many people to sleep. But if you guys are listening, honestly, and you’re running ads or you have a business, you should listen to this and listen to this over again, because there are little nuggets in there that are just gonna help you propel your campaigns, and your campaigns are gonna add to your bottom line.

Bryant G: Yup, and again adskills.com is where John and his partner Justin and them actually teach advertising as well, like Jay and I do. And it’s freaking awesome. I love them. I know the URL spells a little bit differently, and I don’t want to remember it off the top of my head. What is it John? Just in case anybody wants to check you guys out?

John Belcher: Yup, so it’s A-D ad, and then skills.com. S.K.I.L.L.S.com

Bryant G: Awesome!

Jay L: Did you guys buy AdSkills with a Z?

John Belcher: We did not, we thought long and hard about it but thought that would not be a good branding move.

Bryant G: You should buy it just in case somebody does it, searches for it.

John Belcher: We should.

Jay L: Redirect it, yeah. Where else can people find you, John, if they want to connect with you? Or do you just want to send them to AdSkills?

John Belcher: No, that’s great. If you’d like to connection with me personally I’ve got a … you know, Facebook is where I … I’m kind of one of the old guys, the fact that I like to write real copy and go through, and I share stories on my Facebook page, and I spend time to write out a post. It’s where I think about stuff, and so if you like seeing what a person is about and kind of spilling their guts when it comes to how they feel about life, and the appreciation from what I’ve got, Facebook is where I spend the majority of my time. If you want to have a boring quick message on LinkedIn that’s great too, but Facebook is where you’ll find me. And so you can follow me on Twitter, but it might be about eight years before I tweet again!

Bryant G: You just use it for advertising these days, huh?

John Belcher: Exactly. That’s all we use it for, so it’s-

Bryant G: Awesome.

John Belcher: But anyway, I appreciate you guys having me on the show. It’s been a blast being here, and this is … I love what you’re doing, and this is … I just commend the high level thought, and the opportunity for anyone listening, I know that you’ve already got a lot of great nuggets out of these guys, but I highly recommend just digging in deeper and deeper, because what’s important here is they’ve taken some of the old-school theory. The things … I brought up Eugene Schwartz earlier. A lot of people … you can study numbers, and tech, and building campaigns, and planning.

John Belcher: But at the end of the day what this boils down to is conversion, and thinking about things like the five stages of awareness. This is how you become a great ad buyer. It’s not about studying always the details, it’s about taking a step back an looking at the big picture. And so if you already listened to this podcast you’re way ahead of a lot of other people.

Jay L: Awesome.

Bryant G: Dude! Thanks, I’m gonna have to pay you for that endorsement, but if you guys are listening to the podcast, make sure you subscribe. If you’re not subscribed we’re gonna constantly drop stuff like this, we’ve got some other interviews planned here for the next little while. We just wanted John to be the first one to jump on the show with us. Leave a review! If you hate us, if you love us, whatever! Just tell us! We can handle it, maybe. Anyways, but-

Jay L: Make sure it’s a good one, so my mom can read and be proud of me.

Bryant G: Oh, yeah. So yeah, because our moms listen. Our wives don’t anymore, we already talked about this, but anyways have a good day guys! Talk to you later.

Jay L: Thanks.

Speaker 1: Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of the Stack the Odds podcast, with Bryant and Jay. If you liked today’s episode please rate and review the podcast, and we’ll catch you next time on the Stack the Odds podcast.